Bullet Creek

Water Quality (1 bad 3 good)

Scenery (1 bad 3 good)         

Map:

Watershed Map (to find location and size of creek) Click Here

Special thanks to Steve Zerfos for making the map.

Bullet Creek

“The portages all 3/4 of a mile worth of them were so bad, it was beginning to look better, to

just die doing the rapid. “

Mike “Louie” Lewis- May 12, 2009

Class V.2

Brief Description:

Bullet Creek falls off of Starr Mountain in East Tennessee, near the Hiwassee and Tellico Plains area and is a super steep creek, with mank and trees, with a side order of flat landings on rock.

You have ½ mile of flat-water, and a one mile of Class II paddle out boogie water, and one mile of Class V with Laurel and Rhododendron hell. It will take you over 5 hours to run it, with a solid team. Morgan Creek on Walden’s Ridge is wide open compared to Bullet. We caught Bullet with perfect timing, on our shuttle. We gambled on a flash of rain from an approaching storm front. (Mobile SmartPhones Rock)

Our gamble paid off. Once the shuttle was set we watched the two local creeks come up, so Bullet was a go. Once on Bullet, it was bush /limb dodging until we came to the first rapid, from there it picked up.Once into the gorge it is full on Class V + creeking, with Class V +portages you will earn every foot you paddle and you earn every foot you scout and portage. The laurel is intense. The worse I have ever experienced in my 20 + years of paddling

On the first descent Chad Lewis broke his boat. Before the day was done, Chad would begetting a new paddle. This should tell you something. You are better off taking your beater paddle and welded boat, not your new boat or that matter your good gear.

Level:

Look for the Tellico to be over 6.5 ft

Video:

History:

It was first paddled by on 09 May 2009 by:

Mike “Louie” Lewis (OC-1)

Chad Lewis (C-1)

Mark Cumnock (K-1)

Fred Alten (I-K)

How to get there:

Take Out:

From Tellico Plains, head out and find Hwy 315, Look for Bullet Creek Road, you will top the hill, and you will come to an “X” intersection, veer leftish/forward, staying on Bullet Creek Road. You will parallel Bullet Creek, look for a bridge on the right.

Put-in:

Get back on Bullet Creek Road, get on FS Road 44, follow it, and you will cross Yellow Creek, you have one almost a mile veer to the right, you will get on FS 220, drive almost a mile. You will cross a diminutive creek. Park here it’s your put-in.

Here is a picture of the put-in:

Here is the first major rapid, the insult to injury? It lands into 1 ft of water. It’s a clean drop except for the landing.

 

Then it is onto manky rapids.

Here is one of the better rapids. “Ponzi Scheme”

This picture does no justice, of “Ponzi Scheme “. On river left is an over-hang undercut, (not shown)with most of the water heading towards the undercut and the middle section of the drop is about a 15ft drop that lands on a slab .Chad Lewis, nailed this drop when first run , landing hard and sideways due tothe manky approach.(not shown)

Picture of Chad Lewis running Ponzi Scheme.............

The bottom section of Ponzi Scheme..........................

 The next major rapid that got caught on a camera…” Mountain Laurel By-Pass”

Also another rapid that the picture does it no justice to….

This rapid had a very blind approach with 15 foot long slide for its entrance (not shown), then the water tries to push you into the undercuts,(not shown) the run out landed into a <15 foot pool, with sievedout “death on a stick” logs clogging the main chutes.(not shown)

 The approach was also a hard left then haul butt to the right “get on the gas approach”, and is super manky. Running this without a buddy with a rope with the death sieves coming up, would ruin your vacation plans.

This picture makes it look like Class III, It’s not …..

Here it actually turns into manky fun. You finally have enough bedrock to actually start scouting without fighting the Laurel and Rhododendron, now you get to pick up the pace, This section has Class V boulder gnar. Pick your line, and take the lick.